The tone of The Flea is generally quite exaggerated, either being serious or with humour. The language is very over dramatic and is quite hyperbolic. For example the opening of the second stanza, ‘Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare’ is melodramatic and is quite desperate and by saying ‘Oh stay’- its almost pleading. However the tone is not constant it varies. It can be very demanding, by stating ‘Confess it’ Donne is saying admit it, which is somewhat aggressive. The reader gets the impression that Donne is almost sulky that the flea has indulged in something that they’ve been denied and this is portrayed in the line, ‘And this alas, is more than we would do’. The tone of Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is somewhat different. It is more serious due to the nature of the poem and what it addresses. The seriousness is portrayed as the lovers’ relationship is meaningful and deals with a love that is very compelling. The title alone suggests that the two lovers are strongly in love with each other. Though at first the topic maybe moderately morbid as it deals with images of death and parting of lovers by the end of the poem the tone is much more hopeful and we begin to fully understand it’s meaning. It is clear that the poet is going on a journey and they are not separating due to divorce or death. This is shown by the compass image. Although they will be separate physically the intensity of their spiritual bond will not weaken but remain in tacked. The purpose of The Flea is ultimately to convince his lover to sleep with him. Throughout the poem he uses his argument to justify this and to try and influence his mistress’s way of thinking. He makes sex seem more negliable and tries to trivialise it by referring to it as ‘that’. It also makes it seem more flirtatious and alluring. Donne wanted love to be the most important thing in his life, he made it sacred which elevated it’s importance. He possessed a deep spirituality that informed his writing throughout his life, but as a man, Donne possessed a voluptuous lust for life, sensation and experience. The Flea shows his intense need for passion and his restraint compared to that of The Flea. The clever way in which Donne tries to persuade his lover to sleep with him is by making it seem of sacred importance. By using the word ‘cloister’ gives it holy associations which increase it’s fragility and lend weight to the poet’s argument. It also makes it seem right what he is proposing they do by using religious imagery. The purpose of Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is to show his lover that their parting doesn’t have to be full of sadness, although Donne doesn’t deny the fact that it will be acutely painful. He suggests that they can rise above the grief of physical separation. The purpose is also to show how their love is above anything else, it is so pure and heavenly that it will survive their physical parting.
“…’Twere profanation of our joys/ To tell the laity of our love…”
This line is saying that their love is so profound, special and unique that they shouldn’t publicise it. Their parting should be like a silent death of ‘virtuous men’ so it is almost undetectable. Like in The Flea Donne credits his love with religious status, taking it above the comprehension of the common man, the ‘laity’. This poem is almost a reassurance that everything will be all right and it’s not as bad as it seems on the surface. The woman gives a meaning and pattern to his life.
Donne’s use of argument is carefully constructed in The Flea. It increasingly develops steadily through the poem. First Donne addresses his lover:
“…Mark but this flea, and mark in this, / How little that which thou deny’st me is…”’
Straight away he reveals he is arguing a point to his lady that the loss of innocence does not constitute a loss of honour. The opening is dramatic and immediate. The poet begins his argument by condemning the act of intercourse as a shameful sin. He also belittles it, claiming that if the same effects can be realized within the body of a tiny flea, then the act itself cannot hold tremendous importance. In any case, the act is out of the question in the realm of reality, since the two people in the poem do not appear to be married, so sexual union can only be committed symbolically. The argument then shifts to a different position, where the flea suddenly becomes the entire world of the lovers; the symbolic becomes reality. The flea becomes ultimately a symbol of the world in which the lovers' desires are realized, "this our marriage bed and marriage temple is”. The act of intercourse loses its importance as the subject in question, and now the loss of all innocence is addressed. By killing the flea whom the poet has given such strange attributes, the woman squashes the symbolic world the man has constructed and brought them both back to reality. By murdering the "innocent" flea, the lady has "purpled her nail," a colour assigned to the clothing of royalty, so she has suddenly gained a stature of royalty. The woman kills the mysterious flea, casting away her innocence and proving his argument for passion through the use of her own words. Donne finalizes his argument for his cause by granting that the death of the flea is really of no consequence, as are her fears for her honour. Her honour will not waste when she gives in to him. In Valediction: Forbidding Mourning Donne begins his argument by stating how they will feel when they will depart. They will experience the yielding to emotion but won’t show it, they will show ‘no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move’. It will be a gradual ebbing away rather than a sudden dramatic separation. Perception is central to the poem, the perception of the outsider, its irrelevance, and the centrality of the common point of reference that the lovers share. The oneness that is underlined by the image of the lovers melting noiselessly into one another, mingling, absorbing without a clue dispelled to the outside. Every sensation is jealously guarded, nothing is allowed to escape, and not even the effect their union has on the air around them. The object of every action is the other, the world ceases to exist. The lovers exist for each other, and refuse to breathe, to speak for any other. His argument then shifts in the second stanza by using imagery of the earth’s movements which is very powerful and it’s underlying meaning is that what they don’t feel doesn’t concern them. Donne constantly reinforces his argument by elevating their love and by claiming that is far superior than to ‘dull sublunary lovers’ love’. He also uses the image of gold to explain their connection. It suggests fragility but yet remains strong. The conceit of the compass is a fantastic way to encapsulate his entire argument. It brings everything to a close and expresses the sense of her remaining steady and being there to be reunited with him.
The Flea alternates metrically between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter, a 4-5-stress pattern ending with two pentameter lines at the end of each stanza. Thus, the stress pattern in each of the nine-line stanzas is 454545455. The rhyme scheme in each stanza is similarly regular, in couplets, with the final line rhyming with the final couplet: AABBCCDDD. In line 3 there is an orthographic pun.
“…Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee…”
The ‘s’ appears as an ‘f’ which is comically indecent. Previously having referred to sex as ‘that’ makes it very uncouth. Within the line there is an internal rhyme ‘me’ and ‘thee’ which helps emphasise the words. It stresses their mutuality, their lovemaking and relationship. The fact that ‘me’ comes first suggests he is thinking of his ego. The nine stanzas of Valediction: Forbidding Mourning are quite simple compared to many of Donne's poems, which utilize strange metrical patterns overlaid jarringly on regular rhyme schemes. Here, each four-line stanza is quite unadorned, with an ABAB rhyme scheme and an iambic tetrameter meter. The sound qualities on the first line help emphasise the peaceful death:
“As Virtuous men pass mildly away…”
The alliteration of the ‘s’ sounds makes it sound softer. This also occurs further on in the poem in line 20:
“…Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss…”
The alliteration here makes the words sound more sensuous and makes the reader linger over the words. It is almost an appreciation of her physical qualities yet dismissing them as secondary concerns which is slightly ambiguous.
Metaphysical poetry employs unusual verse forms, complex figures of speech applied to elaborate and surprising metaphorical conceits. The use of conceit in both poems has a great impact. The Flea is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems using the flea as an erotic image, a genre derived from an older poem of Ovid. Donne's poise of hinting at the erotic without ever explicitly referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to exactly what he means, is as much a source of the poem's humour as the silly image of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would represent "sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead" gets the point across with a neat conciseness and clarity. As Donne addresses the lady in The Flea he argues ingeniously throughout the verses, shifting the limits of a tiny insect to entire world encompassing the couple. This is ironic that such a small thing as a flea can represent so much, this adds to the humour of the poem. The conceit used in Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is a mathematical compass which may seem strange at first but as your understanding deepens it makes perfect sense. Donne is speaking of a separation of bodies so an insertion of space between the lovers. This geographical distance must be expressed with geo-navigational metaphors, so Donne speaks of the compass and the spheres.
“…If they be two, they are two so/ As stiff twin compasses are two, /Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show/ To move, but doth, if th’other do…”
The speaker then declares that, since the lovers' two souls are one, his departure will simply expand the area of their unified soul, rather than cause a rift between them. If, however, their souls are "two" instead of "one", they are as the feet of a drafter's compass, connected, with the centre foot fixing the orbit of the outer foot and helping it to describe a perfect circle. The compass (the instrument used for drawing circles) is one of Donne's most famous , and it is the perfect image to encapsulate the values of Donne's spiritual love, which is balanced, symmetrical, intellectual, serious, and beautiful in its polished simplicity.
John Donne’s use of argument in both of these poems is remarkable and works extremely well. In The Flea his argument doesn’t ramble it gets straight to the point and is very direct. It moves carefully and concisely to the outrageous conclusion. By including the women’s voice in the poem also makes his argument seem more powerful because she stands no chance of winning and her case is completely crushed by the sheer greatness of Donne’s argument. Valediction: Forbidding Mourning has a sense of perfectness about it as it is so well constructed and beautiful put together. It’s superb use of imagery backs up his argument elevates their love even higher.